Have you ever heard of the Van Allen belts? If not you really should learn about them. After all, without them the majority of life on Earth could not survive. So what are they and how do they keep us alive? The Van Allen Belts are a collection of charged particles, held in place by the magnetic field of Earth, that act as a barrier to prevent the most harmful radiation from the Sun from reaching the surface of the Earth. They shift according to the incoming energy of the Sun, and if there is a large enough swell of...
They did it! 10 Years in Orbit and 2 Billion dollars later, the landing is successful and confirmed. Now comes the fun part: The resulting Science!!! The first image that was beamed through 28 ad a half light minutes showed the lander on its descent, about 3km from the surface. The landing wasn’t perfect though. In fact it may have ‘landed twice.’ The 4km wide comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko doesn’t have enough gravity to keep the lander from flying out into space, which is why Philae was equipped with a harpoon system to lock it in place on the surface. Yesterday I...
Launched in December of 2013, the European Space Agency (ESA)’s GAIA Mission will be the next great mission to find exoplanets, planets orbiting stars other than our own Sun. However, GAIA’s main mission is not to search for planets, but to look at the motion, physical characteristics, and distance of up to one Billion stars with incredible precision. It’s a given that the satellite will invariably find planets by seeing the ‘wobble’ of a star due to the gravity of a planetary system. One of the strengths that GAIA posesses over other exoplanet studies is that it will search a...
I did a short presentation last night for a group of families at a Halloween event. My job was to talk space but make it as spooky as possible and use some Halloween themes for the kids. There really is a fine line between teaching Science and being entertaining, but here’s some of the things I did. Lets start with the following image….What does this look like to you? Did you say the head of a witch? Then yes you are right! This is known as the Witch Head Nebula. A nebula is a place where gas and dust in...
The sun is definitely hitting its usual ‘rebellious’ phase on its 11 year sunspot cycle, where it flares up at literally everything. The biggest sunspot observed in 24 years has been releasing huge amounts of energy, in the form of X-class solar flares. In the past week this sunspot, designated AR 12192, has released 3 X-class flares, including a huge X-3.1 on Friday. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has been watching the light show. Okay so the Sun is blowing up, what does all this mean? Let’s start with Sunspots. A sunspot is a place on the sun where there...
Yesterday’s post had me discuss the partial Solar Eclipse that occurred around sunset for most of North America. The one thing I neglected to mention was regarding safe viewing of it. In reality if you saw the sun with your bare eyes during a partial eclipse, it looks like the sun any other time of day – its bright. Don’t damage your eyes. I found a bit of time in the afternoon to build a pinhole camera, which basically consists of a tube or box with a pinhole in one end and a film or ‘viewing area’ at the other...
Tonight, right around sunset, there will be a partial eclipse of the sun, visible from most of North America. As the sun sets, skywatchers will get to see the moon gradually cover about half of the sun, before it disappears below the horizon. A map of the viewing area shows that the best spot to see it will be all the way up in the Canadian arctic. If you don’t live in the Arctic circle, you can certainly see the eclipse in the South-West near the horizon as it sets. The moon will start to cover the sun around 5:45 EDT,...
When comets breakup it can be an emotional time for Astronomers, amateur and professional alike. Though not like a breakup with a significant other, we get our hopes up that the next comet will be a comet of the century. We do this because comets are very unpredictable, and any given close approach to Earth could be spectacular….or terrible. Comet ISON is about to pass behind the sun on November 28th, and could potentially break into pieces from the sun’s incredible tidal forces. In honour of a new potential breakup, here are the top 5 comet breakups in history: #5...
Alpha Centauri. Not only is it an alien in Dr.who, a strategy game released in 1999, and an album released by the German electronic band tangerine dream, but it’s the brightest star in our closest stellar system. Named for being the brightest star in the constellation Centaurus in the southern sky, its a little over 4 light years away from Earth, and is very similar to our sun in terms of size, age, mass, composition, and temperature. Here is a great infographic from Space.com. Scientists have recently discovered that Alpha Centauri shares yet another resemblance to our home star: It has a strange, cooler...
